Network or datacenter facilities provide storage space, power, bandwidth, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) for equipment such as network communication equipment, servers, data storage equipment, etc. As the network facilities expand, controlling access to the equipment is a much larger issue. For example, controlling access to the equipment arranged in the network facility is not just controlling access of a company to its equipment, it also involves controlling access of the provider of the network facility to the equipment. With the increase of access to the network facility, systems and methods for access control to the equipment in the network facility are desired by customers. For example, parties or customers may desire to monitor and/or control access by each piece of equipment arranged in the storage space within a network facility.
Existing access control methods are very coarse. For instance, access control systems and methods have traditionally been utilized at a room (e.g., cage) level. For example, a party (e.g., a customer, an organization, an entity) may simply monitor the equipment arranged in the room to detect a problem and/or receive a new service request to be added, and based on the monitoring and/or the request, the party may instruct the provider of the network facility to correct the detected problem and/or address the request to add the new service. While this approach helps ensure that the provider of the network facility is at least documented, it does not provide visibility to services performed on each piece of equipment arranged in the room. Having the visibility to services performed on each piece of equipment arranged in the room, would provide a party the ability to monitor each piece of equipment arranged in the room and increase accountability of the services performed on the equipment.
Furthermore, a party's ability to individually control access to each piece of equipment disposed in the network facilities is also desired by parties. For example, today's parties may be capable of controlling access to the room containing the equipment. However, a party may desire to control not only access to the room, but also control access to each piece of equipment arranged in the room. Moreover, a party may desire to control not only access to the room, but also control access to each node or circuits of network connectivity. Having the ability to control access to each piece of equipment arranged in the room, would provide a party the ability to reduce negligence and improve network reliability for the equipment.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for individual equipment access control and monitoring to increase accountability and improve network performance.